How to Take Your Local Service Business to the Next Level

Forget about the election results! It’s over. We can’t use this as an excuse not to follow our dreams! At the end of the day, I truly believe no matter who is in the office that we as entrepreneurs in America have an extreme advantage to chase our goals! In my previous blog post, The American Dream, I explain what it means to be an entrepreneur in this country, so just take a second to embrace that with me. Find out, is your business scalable, in this week’s Momentum Monday Marketing Blog!

If I were to ask you what some of your goals were right now could you tell me? Well, if these aren’t things you think about daily or at least weekly, then your chances of attaining them decrease exponentially. I think about my goals daily. I might not write them down, but I’m not afraid to tell other people.

• Double revenue for my companies YoY
• Make my first million by 30
• Drive $1 million in revenue for each business by 30
• Master’s Degree by 30

This list does not end when I hit 30, but for the sake of time, let’s leave it at that. The point I’m trying to make here is that I have serious goals that I think about constantly, and recently I have noticed that I might not be able to achieve some of the monetary aspirations because my main company, Momentum Digital, in its current structure and business model, is simply not scalable. In this Entrepreneur Magazine article about Scalability by contributor Will Housh, I noticed that the references linear growth and the consequences of not thinking about your business model early and often. Don’t pigeonhole your growth by not taking the time to think about your goals and scaling your business to drastically increase your revenue and profit.

Do you trade your time for money? Do you offer a professional service business? If so, then listen up!

Do you trade your time for money? Do you offer a professional service business? If so, then listen up!

If you’re trading your time for money, then you simply won’t be able to grow at the pace needed to achieve your goals. That last bit is true for me at least as I’m hoping to double revenue year-over-year. Well, this means I then need to double the number of clients, which means I need to double the amount of time we provide, which means I need to double the size of my team. The inherent problem with this model is that it’s SIMPLY NOT EASY. This is easier said than done because it takes time. It takes time to find new people, finds good people, interview, hires, train employees, increases your services, bring everyone up to speed, and so on. It also takes time to increase the sales side of your business. It takes time to network, meets new people, communicates, creates content, strategizes, creates proposals, and simply sign these new clients. AND You all know this is true.

One of my want to be mentors, and someone I look up to and respect is Gary Vaynerchuk. If you don’t know who this is and you consider yourself an entrepreneur, then I might have just changed your life. Gary V has a YouTube show/channel called #AskGaryVee. In one of his episodes, he gets asked about Scalability and how to scale your business. We all have the same amount of time per week: 168 hours. It’s what we do with that time to prepare ourselves for the future and scaling our business is what is most important. We need to stop focusing on mundane tasks we can have someone else focus on while we build the business. This is something I am learning and working on, but the first step is to understand completely.

So, what is my business and how can I scale it? That’s the million-dollar (or more) question for us all. Well, Momentum Digital is going to scale in one very important way: Partnerships. The past year we have been trading our time for money. That’s incredibly linear and exhausting. I have friends and business contacts who own agencies. I guess they are happy and successful, but they aren’t wealthy. You build wealth by acquiring assets and having leverage and capital. My NEW strategy will include limiting the number of retainer clients we have for the agency AND INSTEAD focus on partnering with companies. There will be two types of partnerships:

1. Equity Partnerships = Actually owning part of a smaller company or startup
   1. This is an equitable asset partnership where we own a piece of a company we want to help grow.
2. Revenue Share = Taking a percentage of revenue on a monthly basis.
   1. This is a partnership based on being compensated based on the financial success and revenue growth of the company.

Do you see the point I’m making? With any digital marketing agency, we all end up signing new clients on retainers or projects. Maybe we get a $2000 monthly retainer for SEO and Adwords. This is great, don’t get me wrong, but the problem is that’s going to get us into the same problem of trading our time for money. Another problem is that the company we provide these marketing services for is reaping all the rewards. They are making all the revenue and profits off of our successful implementation of the marketing strategy. Yes, of course, I want to make my clients more money, but I want to make more money as well, and I believe this to be fair. By providing these digital marketing services we’ve essentially already partnered with you and gained your trust. So why not actually partner and write up a contract and have the client save money on the monthly retainer while having an agency essentially help build your company for free, and then we both reap the rewards down the road?

Think LONG TERM. This is essential to growth and sustainability. Be smart, be confident, and make the right decisions that are going to end in favorable results that help achieve your goals.

So, is your business scalable? Think about it.